Why downtime is not (just) an IT problem

One of the most dangerous things that business folks can do is to create a “us and them” mentality between those that use IT services and those that deliver them. Kind of like in politics, when the camps are already divided, it’s that much harder to collaborate — even if it is just sharing needs, constraints, and expectations. The bottom line is that there is a very symbiotic relationship between the business units and IT. So, deciding that circumstances like downtime or data-loss are 100% IT’s responsibility is like an eye denying that they are part of the same body as the ear, or vice versa.

Last week, we looked at the technical expectations of downtime and data loss, to help the IT Pro understand the importance of combining multiple approaches of data protection, based on backups, but complementing with snapshots and/or replication. This week, we’re looking at the business impacts (without the techno-jargon) to emphasize that downtime and data-loss are NOT just IT issues:

Now that we’ve unpacked the problems and the various stakeholder, we’ll start digging into what is driving change to address the issues next week. Here is the complete series for Tuesdays in October:

This is week two in a five-week series, every Tuesday in October:

  1. Backup is not a destination
  2. Do you have a ‘reality gap’ in your IT strategy?
  3. Why downtime is not (just) an IT problem
  4. Why ‘cloud’ and ‘reliability’ are driving IT changes into 2020
  5. Which cloud should you use for data protection and why

P.S. If you’d like the eBook that helps translate the three languages of data protection (technical, operational, and financial), download theData Protection by the Numbers for Dummies

This article was originally posted on the Veeam Blog.

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